FIERCENESS

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does fierceness mean? 

• FIERCENESS (noun)
  The noun FIERCENESS has 1 sense:

1. the property of being wild or turbulent

  Familiarity information: FIERCENESS used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FIERCENESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The property of being wild or turbulent

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

ferocity; fierceness; furiousness; fury; vehemence; violence; wildness

Context example:

the storm's violence

Hypernyms ("fierceness" is a kind of...):

intensity; intensiveness (high level or degree; the property of being intense)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "fierceness"):

savageness; savagery (the property of being untamed and ferocious)

Derivation:

fierce (violently agitated and turbulent)

fierce (ruthless in competition)

fierce (marked by extreme intensity of emotions or convictions; inclined to react violently; fervid)

fierce (marked by extreme and violent energy)

 Context examples 

"Understand?" the other thundered with abrupt fierceness.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

The warm taste of it in his mouth goaded him to greater fierceness.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

The set of his mouth, his chin, his jaw, was likewise firm or harsh, with all the fierceness and indomitableness of the male—the nose also.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

In person he was a thick-set, burly man with a shock of grizzled hair, a brown, weather-beaten face, and blue eyes which were keen to the verge of fierceness.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Already the sudden storm is passing, and its fierceness is abating; crowds are scattering homeward, and the sky is beginning to redden over the Yorkshire wolds.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

I trembled with excess of agitation as I said this; there was a frenzy in my manner, and something, I doubt not, of that haughty fierceness which the martyrs of old are said to have possessed.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

He relapsed into silence, but I saw the same look of cold fierceness settle upon his features which I had marked there when he and Sir John Lade had raced wheel to wheel down the Godstone road.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The fierceness of this creature’s countenance altogether discomposed me; though I stood at the farther end of the table, above fifty feet off; and although my mistress held her fast, for fear she might give a spring, and seize me in her talons.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

But more than once, stealing into the room, when it was her watch off, she would catch the two men glaring ferociously at each other, wild animals the pair of them, in Hans's face the lust to kill, in Dennin's the fierceness and savagery of the cornered rat.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

It was so much added fuel to the flame of his fierceness.

(White Fang, by Jack London)